The Copenhagen Cave

Now that the Copenhagen climate summit has ended, I haven't spoken with a single Canadian who had any expectation other than that Canada failed both in leadership and respectability this past 10 days. In truth, we didn't expect it, and so we aren't so shocked at the dismal outcome. This is the present government's way of diminishing expectations so as to minimize disappointment.Except that we are saddened by the inevitable outcome of Copenhagen; it confirms our relentless slide in world opinion. It was the most significant summit to come along since Kyoto. Most of the signatories to the Kyoto targets curtailed their excessive outputs, choosing to live within sustainable means that would give the planet a fighting chance. But Canada, though an original signatory, never even got close. The times were just too good and the products just too plentiful. And the Harper government effectively split our collective conscience by making sustainable development a devil's choice between curtailing climate change or limiting economic growth. Despite the fact that these two issues are significantly inter-linked, Canadians just couldn't be bothered to summon up enough energy to do our part for Kyoto. My neighbour says, "Why should we have chosen to prioritize the environment, when the feds never did?" Except on the most idealistic scale, it's hard to argue his point.Stephen Harper and his environment minister provided the debilitating narrative two years prior to Copenhagen. They would not make a move without American leadership, regardless of what the rest of the world did. The PM claimed he was looking for a "continental" remedy for the environment when Copenhagen itself was all about global solutions. By hiding out in Copenhagen during his visit, he was necessarily scratched from the roster of other world leaders requested in a meeting with President Obama. The embarrassment of clinging to the Americans while at the same time being left out of the key meetings is a reality that lingers.What the world got in the end was the Copenhagen Accord, which is more or less just a grandiose moniker. The Canadian government, which had been calling for reductions based on 2006 targets, watched in petulance as the final agreement was based on Kyoto's 1990 targets. Canada eventually signed on to the accord but with a decidedly lacklustre commitment. A global agreement that has no long-term targets and permits individual governments to voluntarily buy in is just what the doctor ordered for the Conservative government. They can now string it out over the next few years, picking and choosing what best meets their retail kind of politics.And Canadians themselves? Except for the interested groups on both sides of the issue, Canadians moved on with their shopping for the holidays and hopes that the economy will soon rebound. This is what you get when a government lowers your expectations, while at the same time turning you off of politics altogether by a mean spirit that shuts down anyone who attempts to put in fresh ideas.No deal would have been reached in Copenhagen but for the artful and forceful intervention of Obama himself. He threw a Hail Mary pass but in the end had to settle for a brokered overtime period. He will have a recalcitrant Congress that will inevitably seek to water down the best he could deliver at the global summit. And if that isn't challenging enough for him, he'll look north of the 49th parallel and wonder what ever happened to his partner that said they would follow his lead. When the drastic consequences of Copenhagen's failure flood upon us in the coming decades, Canadians will wonder what they did to deserve this. The answer will be that, following the example of recent years, Canada "caved" at Copenhagen, inevitably leaving its citizens that it swore to protect fending for themselves. No matter how you look at it, it was one of our worst moments.